The two most influential sea power theorists on twentieth-century naval warfare are Alfred Thayer Mahan and Julian S. Corbett. One American, and one British, each heavily influenced the nature of their country’s naval forces in the two world wars. Mahan’s ideas preceded Corbett by two decades. Each, however, argued for the need to control sea lanes to exert influence.
In his seminal The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660–1783, Mahan argued that naval power and national power go hand in hand. The battlefleet is the means to secure this power, which then entailed concentrating ships to gain ‘command of the sea’ through a decisive defeat of the enemy fleet. If the enemy avoids this, then attacking the fleet in its harbor is preferred. To achieve that end, Mahan advocated a robust system of overseas coaling stations by which turn of the century coal-fired ships could refuel and resupply throughout the world. These ideas influenced much of American imperial policy, including the 1898 Spanish-American War and subsequent control over the Philippine Islands, Cuba, and Puerto Rico.
Mahan’s work was translated into Japanese more than any other language. The Japanese victory against the Russian fleet in Tsushima Straits in 1905 only furthered Mahan’s thesis on decisive naval engagements. The Japanese focus on imperialist action to control fuel supples and refueling stations while believing in decisive naval engagements over the protection of supply lines demonstrates Mahanian influence. Mahanian principles also influenced German Naval operations.
During both world wars, German naval commanders pursued large surface fleets to compete with the British Royal Navy. However, once German commanders abandoned pure Mahanian doctrine to allow their submarines to hunt Allied supply convoys, their success skyrocketed, and the First World War and later the Battle of the Atlantic turned into a war of attrition. Mahan was the first naval theorist to codify naval strategy and thoughts regarding “command of the sea.”
Mahan also influenced his home country, as the United States built a large and powerful fleet, acquired advanced strategic bases, and constructed the Panama Canal. His decisive battle theories influenced US Navy strategy in the Pacific in World War II, despite no climactic battle. Despite Mahan’s great prognostication, victory in the Pacific was the product of combined operations — not the navy alone.
British naval theorist and historian Julian Corbett represents a second prominent naval theorist. Corbett was heavily influenced by Mahan, Clausewitz, and Jomini and thus links naval warfare to politics vis a vis Clausewitz and sees naval warfare as part of national policies. However, if Mahan is the Jomini of the sea and wedded to various principles that bring mass to a climactic, decisive battle, Corbett represents a Clausewitzian view of sea power. In his work Some Principles of Maritime Strategy: A Theory of War on the High Seas, Corbett presents sea power is a critical part of the larger war, as ultimately humans live on land. His primary argument was against Mahanian narrowing of naval warfare to simply winning battles and gaining command of the sea.
Corbett argues instead that for the British Empire to go to war, equal consideration must be given to naval, military, and political aspects of war. War at sea was only one branch of war as a whole. He asserts that his theory brings out the intimate relationship between “fleet and army as one weapon,” and that maritime states must integrate naval and ground operations “no less intimately connected than are the three arms ashore.”
During World War I, as the German High Seas Fleet did not look for the major battle, a stalemate ensued. British blockades succeeded in cutting off German maritime communications, thus validating Corbett’s theories. During World War II, British and later American naval forces adhered to his principle and immediately moved to seize and control lines of communication across the Atlantic Ocean and throughout the Pacific to allow ground operations to defeat enemy forces eventually.
